Help

Update: Please read this in relation to the comments attached!!

OK lets cut the crap, this article isn’t going to help you make you a better OT student, its not going to give you constructive advice on how to best use your limited practice time and its not going to be pretty. It is, however, going to give you the powers to bullshit your way to the best grade possible and have hypnotic control over your educator. After only a few weeks you will see results. By the end of your placement your practice educator will be waiting patiently by your desk, on all fours, drooling from the mouth and asking for ‘another MOHO biscuit’.

Always carry a black pen – When everything is going well and there are no significant flaws in your work practice educators tend to regress to Freud’s anal stage, in which the smallest details are highlighted to you, ostensibly returning the educator to the position of authority.

Go for a drink with them – As Oscar Wilde recognizes it is not what one does in work that makes one successful but what one does outside of work. Quite

Feign ignorance – Of course you know what a functional split is or errorless learning or CBT or solution focused therapy. You know because you are aware of current evidence base and NICE guidelines. Thing is your practice educator graduated from a Women’s Institute craft school in the 1930’s and have held on to the one or two stands of knowledge that dementia has not whittled away. Just say, “oh how interesting, I really did not know that…well done”.

Furnish their Ego’s – Don’t be fooled into thinking the Educator is an altruistic in nature. The educator resents being legally obliged to have a student and will moan about the inconvenience at every opportunity. Instead the educator wants to be both admired and loved. Love them and admire them.

Ask them to be an accomplice - At your midway interview say how you are aiming for the best possible grade and would like their assistance in pushing you that bit harder. Demand criticism! (Reverse psychology works every time)

The anti COPM – Don’t be fooled into thinking that it is a student-centred relationship - The educator is the main problem definer.

Flirt – If you fail to win them over with your clinical reasoning skills try blinding them with more primitive influences (please refer to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs). This will subvert the balance of power and make it more equal (only in a smutty way, not in a professional capacity).

Threaten – If your final review didn’t go quite as planned the ‘final solution’ is the good old-fashioned ultra violence. You can employ many techniques including verbal and non-verbal behaviour. Borrowing lines from famous films is recommended if your mind goes blank from the anticipated sadism that you are about to create – “I’m gonna make you an offer you can’t refuse” is a good one. Counting backwards with a threat at the end is always intimidating too. The last tip is to slowly walk over to the door and lock it, then walk behind the educators back laughing nervously, like a James Bond baddy.

Quote Kielhofner - If all else fails just spout some Kielhofner rubbish. Showing your practice educator MOHO is like showing a monkey an ipod: It doesn’t understand it yet it will look puzzlingly at it for hours on end.

Go forth and succeed!

(Image Courtesy of epc @ flickr - Licensed under Creative Commons)